With much anticipation for the new Mac OS, Leopard many have finally gotten their copy. There are also those that have yet to either upgrade or even make the transition to the Mac of their choice. If you have yet to make the move see my Top 5 Reasons To Switch To A Mac Now! If you have yet to install your copy of Leopard or don’t plan on upgrading just yet you still need to know how to back up your machine without using Leopards new Time Machine feature.

I back up my machine often (probably close to twice a month) just to be careful. This may be too much for you or not enough but it is always wise to make sure you have a copy of your files should anything go wrong with your computer. As I prepared to receive my official copy of leopard (I say official as I’ve been running a developers copy for the last month or so) I myself had to go through the backup process. Now, everybody has their own way of backing up their machine but since getting a Mac I always seemed to use the same process. Once I have Time Machine working I’m sure this process will change but until then this is how I work. I first made sure I had an external hard drive big enough to store all my important files (music,pictures,apps,preferences,bookmarks etc). I’ve been using the Lacie Porche 250GB drive and have been very pleased.

Alright so how do you make sure all of your files are backed up? Well, first you want to make sure you’re copying the files from your specifc user account. I also setup up a folder on my external labeled “backup” and added the date. Within that folder I make sub-folders that replicate what I’m backing up. As seen below, I selected the user account “admin” as thats the way I have labeled my profile.

I usually start off with the files on my desktop. I select the desktop folder. Note, I usually don’t just drag the entire folder itself but select all the contents from within that folder and drag those to my newly created location on my external titled “desktop”. I choose to do it this way as I’ve dragged the entire folder in the past and have received errors and troubles transferring.

Following that I run down the list of folders in my admin profile. I make sure to copy all the contents from these files to identical titled folders on my external. I make sure to copy the contents from the following folders:

• Documents
• Music
• Movies (If I have anything in there)
• Pictures

You’ll notice I didn’t mention “Library”. There are only a few things you really need to transfer over from this folder thus to save time and hassle I only select the necessary items. These items are as follows:

• Safari Folder (This contains all your bookmarks)
• Firefox (Within Application Support Folder and these include your bookmarks)

Then depending on what other apps you use you may want to be sure to back up those prefs as well. In my case, I backed up my feeds for NewsFire (my RSS reader) and Ecto (my desktop blogging client). Thats it! That wasn’t that painful at all was it? Of course with the addition of Time Machine my process will soon be changed as it will for many others. Once I have my official copy up and running (some time tomorrow) I plan on utilizing the backup features and will let you all know how it goes. Until then, start backing up your files already!!

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 29th, 2007 at 11:31 am and is filed under Apple, How-To, Workflow. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.